Nevertheless, I think both Regina and Steve are on to something, and this for two reasons.

Firstly, it is by no means clear to me that labelling something ‘offensive’ necessarily implies that it is morally wrong. If not, then this obviously raises the question why Ofcom had any business making an issue of it, but then Ofcom is not, as far as I am aware, supposed to be a moral guardian so much as a regulatory authority with a regulatory mandate. It may well be that Ofcom overstepped its authority, but it would be a bizarre piece of legislative drafting if the criterion had to do with morality per se. (One of course hopes that laws are designed with moral principles in mind, but even that tends to be indirect. Morality should come in at the level of political decision-making, and thenceforth should presumably play only a rather minor role, the main emphasis being rather on faithfully applying the law.) and as for the song, it appears that no regulatory authority was involved, and the radio stations (and songstress) were just taking their listeners feelings (and, of course, their own reputations) into account.

And this brings me to my second point. Why would the feelings of the viewer/listener not be relevant in determining whether a juxtaposition is to be considered morally defensible or not? Obviously we cannot say that a speech act is immoral (let alone worthy of censorship) because somebody somewhere might be offended, but just as (in Steve’s example) you would not joke about banana skins at the funeral of someone who had died slipping on one, so it seems reasonable to disapprove of gratuitously screening/playing light-hearted reminders of a recent trauma (be it a rape scene screened a few seconds ago or a massacre that took place a few days ago).

And I think this raises a more general issue, which has become something of an obsession for me, namely the extent to which emotion and aesthetics play a legitimate role in our normative calculations, and the extent to which they tend to be undervalued by ethicists because they see emotion and aesthetics as somehow inimical to reason. Once we understand that reason and fact alone cannot determine what we should value (Hume’s insight, but one which many ethicists, and others of course, seem to have great difficult really grasping), then we can see more clearly to recognise the crucial role that emotions and aesthetics must indeed play, and we can further understand that they are only inimical to reason to the extent that they become so strong that they overwhelm our capacity to reason, and we have not developed the mindfulness skills to ensure that they don’t. I would certainly be interested to see more attention being paid to this issue on this blog.

“…but wondering if there were ways for parents (broadly construed, to include eg governments) to have great influence, and why we were so terrible at figuring out these methods, if they did exist”

Firstly, I would urge you to really do read “The Nurture Assumption”, or at least the original article: Harris, J. R. Where is the child’s environment? A group socialization theory of development. Psychological Review, 102, 458-489, (1995).

If Harris theory do stand up to scientific scrutiny, it does eminently explain the “why”, and point to both the possible opportunities and constraints for the “how”.

Harris does touch extensively upon these issues as well, both directly and implicitly in her book.

“…and why we were so terrible at figuring out these methods, if they did exist”

Were we, are we? To whom do you refer, and on what time scale, historical epoch?

So the real answer is: parents don’t want to be better, they want to be the worst possible kind of parents which would allow for the survival and reproducibly of their child. Evolution is an evil god.

Evolution shapes the wants of parents, but parents don’t want the same thing as evolution. Example: evolution “wants” people to have sex, people want to have the pleasure of sex, but evolution doesn’t “want” people to have the pleasure of sex. So, for instance, if you gave people control over their environment, they would not go in the direction that evolution would “want” them to go (see contraceptive pills).

Also, there’s strong evidence of cultural changes in how parents relate to children – post Rousseau, post reduced child mortality – on scales much faster than evolution can manage.

I wasn’t looking at the current setup, though, but wondering if there were ways for parents (broadly construed, to include eg governments) to have great influence – and why we were so terrible at figuring out these methods, if they did exist.

Great improvements on either axis would be good!

>What if parents delude themselves in thinking that they have all that much influence of their progeny’s outcomes.

The question is not whether current parenting has much of an influence, but whether it could have a lot more influence – and why we haven’t discovered a way to do that yet.

Useful AND incremental

Often, only different socioeconomic groups have been compared in studies, (if I have understood the situation correctly), in most cases without no real comparisons between radically different cultures and societes.

I think this points to a potential very serious defect, (together with the absence of genetics), since antropological data and, even simple anecdotal observations (as you present here), indicate easily observed and obvious apparent differences.